Month: December 2016

My body is finally relaxed.
It’s hard to find that peace during the school year, even at home during the Christmas Break. There are all the school assignments hanging over me, along with having to get things done and plan for the new year at school.
But the boy, wife, and I are finally in Montana. We can’t stay for long, but we needed to get things done at our place before new renters come. 12 hours yesterday to Idaho Falls was easy. Today was the scariest driving day I’ve ever encountered–from Idaho Falls, up through the mountains, to Bozeman. Weather reports and Google apps had no issues on our journey. However, my wife has reminded me kindly that we need a living will because I lost sight of the road at points today. At one juncture, in a kind of white out, after almost getting stuck in a snowbank on the right-hand side of the road, I ended up pulling the car out of that situation, skidded across the road into the oncoming lane (luckily no cars were coming), and had a car pass me on the right of a two-lane.
Scary. I almost bit my kid’s head off when he informed me he had to use the bathroom during one of the white-out moments. My wife and I are convinced our whole bodies will be sore tomorrow from tensing our muscles the whole time.
But Montana is amazing, as is our house and property. We met the new tenants of our guest house–they seem nice and have a big old dog, as does everyone here. The driveway is long and needs to be plowed, but someone will do that today. We’ve already bought enough beer and meat product to get us through the rest of the days we’re here, and then some.
It’s hard to tell people about Montana, so I’ll let John Steinbeck do it for me. Hit it–The next passage in my journey is a love affair. I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, and it’s difficult to analyze love when you’re in it. Once, when I raptured in a violet glow given off by the Queen of the World, my father asked me why, and I thought he was crazy not to see. Of course I know now she was a mouse-haired, freckle-nosed, scabby-kneed little girl with a voice like a bat and the loving kindness of a gila monster, but then she lighted up the landscape and me. It seems to me that Montana is a great splash of grandeur. The scale is huge but not overpowering. The land is rich with grass and color, and the mountains are the kind I would create if mountains were ever put on my agenda. Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans. Here for the first time I heard a definite regional accent unaffected by TV-ese, a slow-paced warm speech. It seemed to me that the frantic bustle of America was not in Montana. Its people did not seem afraid of shadows in a John Birch Society sense. The calm of the mountains and the rolling grasslands had got into the inhabitants. It was hunting season when I drove through the state. The men I talked to seemed to me not moved to a riot of seasonal slaughter but simply to be going out to kill edible meat. Again my attitude may be informed by love, but it seemed to me that the towns were places to live in rather than nervous hives. People had time to pause in their occupations to undertake the passing art of neighborliness.
He says more. You have the Internet and can look it up. As for me, the sun just shot through the clouds so I’m going outside to take a picture.
I’ll return to California too soon. This time, I think the Interstate is in order.

I don’t wish for much. I’ve always lived within my means and been a stubborn worker, oftentimes putting job in front of everything else.
Today was the last day before break and kids were amped up on sugar products. I got a chance to just talk with many of them, laugh with and at them, be an idiot, and to get a general feel for how everything went the first 66 days.
I loved having F students bring me tamales, A students bake treats for others, and the overall sharing and silliness that accompany a last day of school before an 18-day break. Still the stubborn one, though, I have my wishes for 2017.
Please let the next 114 days go as quickly as the first 66. I work with some cool people, who I hope know I think they’re cool people, and want their days to be as rewarding as school allows.
Allow my students to understand that trying is not a bad thing, that failure is not forever, and that someday they’ll be old and want these years back–the insulation of high school as opposed to the world that will crush too many of them.
Give my students’ minds the ability to think past themselves. Empathy and understanding of others’ circumstances is bad enough in the real world, but high school can be used as an adjective for a reason.
Find me some energy to keep at them. Every single day should be confusing and thought-provoking. It should also feature laughter.
I wish I could get better books, better lessons, better food, people from the outside world, field trips, better schedules, less school and more action.

I’m sure most of my colleagues want the same things, but one can never be sure if it’s the malaise of the students that rubs off on teachers, or vice-versa. There’s a reason the Christmas break needs to be many days–we’re tired. At least I am.
Oh, I also wish that I could get together with everyone who has crossed paths with me in education. Maybe some of the folks could work a lure through a river and see who caught what. Maybe others could talk about a kick-ass movie or TV show or book or music. We’d put aside education-ease for a day and eat a baguette with salty butter, some cheese and fruit, wash it down with something tasty. We’d yell and howl and smoke cigars and stay up too late because we were having a good time.
We had a good time once, didn’t we?

I have good students. Despite anything in my posts that suggest otherwise due to low test scores on books not read, I have good students. In APN, the senior class I teach with Gillian Hart, we trust our students with anything, which is not easy because there’s that voice in the back of our heads that says, “They’re young. Watch out. They might disappoint you and make you look bad.” And, yeah, they do that now and again, but they come through again and again when given the opportunity.
Nikki Kikuchi (now Ueda) was one of my good students in APN and graduated many years ago, maybe 2008. She’s funny because she doesn’t think she’s that great. She, like any general good student mentioned above, never disappointed me, except when she thought that she wasn’t so great. She got A’s in my senior English class, smiled a lot, had a solid group of friends that might have been trouble outside of school, played basketball rather adequately, and was probably in student council. Yeah, big deal, right? She was even in the homecoming court because she was nominated by others.
I’m always reminded of her because the person who teaches next door to me thinks way highly of her, as do I. We often tell her this, and did the other day on Facebook when it was her birthday, but Nikki just blows us off like we’re talking out our arses, which we often do, too. We always tell her that she doesn’t get it, the reason we think highly of her. And she’ll just smile or be self-deprecating in some way to deflect. We get it; she doesn’t.
This is Nikki.
–shows up to class and is happy
–has read or done whatever needed to be read or done
–can carry on a conversation with a teacher
–doesn’t make excuses, but doesn’t need to in the first place
–is up for anything
–can take criticism and not need a safe space
–can assimilate into any group, young or old
–works and plays hard
–she “buys in” to whatever she’s doing
–still doesn’t get it

She ended up at El Camino, and then transferred and graduated from UCLA. She worked for Lionsgate Films, but didn’t “feel it,” so she ended up at Mattel doing something she likes. She comes by now and again to see the struggle, but not because she wants something. Sometimes there are sweets involved, ones that she brings for her old teachers. There will also be little reminders from her about Mattel and how she can get a discount and if we have kids who need something (because APN does volunteering and community service).
I have awesome students every year and may even have a future Nikki Kikuchi (now Ueda) in APN. But I have to feel that she thought a little less of herself because the school didn’t erect a temple for her GPA, or her AP scores, or her CST scores, or her SAT scores, or her ACT scores, or her CAHSEE scores, which were probably fine.
El Camino, UCLA, workforce, married, probably drives a Prius and listens to NPR in it–if she’s not private, you can look her up online. Oh, and if you know any more people like her, please send them to all our classes so teachers could have something to look forward to. Even on a Thursday.

Something happened the other day that I still don’t know how to process. There are about three scenarios for this happening–one is great, the others are not.
So, I gave a Lord of the Flies quiz to my HONORS sophomores. Run-of-the-mill reading-plus quiz, where they had to think a little, but the thinking was way easy if they read the book. As usual, my good students did well, some others did pretty well, while others failed miserably. On a 25-question quiz of matching, true/false, characters who said quotes, and multiple guess, the average in one class was 16 (64 percent), while the average in the other was 17.3 (69 percent). When you consider that there were some kids who received 22s, 23s, and a 24, it makes the average look a little worse.
I was bummed. This a book that isn’t that tough and some kids actually like. They were supposed to be finished with it last Wednesday–knowing that there would be a ton of work coming on it–yet I gave this quiz on Monday, two days ago. They had an entire extra weekend.
Here’s the awful part, where I have no idea what to think. My 12-yr-old son Anton read this book over the summer. Lord of the Flies was an optional book for his summer reading between sixth and seventh grade. On his flights to and from LAX and RDU (Raleigh/Durham), he started and finished the book. Maybe a few pages were read in the terminal. When he got back home, I asked him some questions about it, we talked about what I teach in the book, and that was that. We might have talked for 10-15 minutes in July about the book, but have never spoken about it again.
On Monday, he heard me groaning about all the wrong answers I marked on their quizzes. As an absolute goof, I gave him the quiz. Now, mind you, we talk about Lord of the Flies all the time in class, do close readings, watch the movie, have character worksheets, and talk about Golding and his themes that he states in the final pages. It’s the book we are reading and it doesn’t go away. My students had the quiz in front of them, and have taken many of my quizzes before.
My son has never taken a quiz of mine. And, for this Lord of the Flies quiz, I was sitting in my chair with the quiz while he was ten feet away on the couch. He did NOT have the quiz in front of him. I read him the questions and he answered them quickly. The matching were answered without the names in front of him, and not having read the book since July. I read the others, including the multiple guess, which featured some long answers.
I had 65 kids take this quiz. My student who has the highest grade in both classes, he who has never received a B EVER, got the 24 of 25. Anton got a 23, the same as three other students. Everyone else was lower and, once again, remember those averages. That’s right, though–my 12-yr-old son, without the quiz in front of him, without thinking about the book for five months, did better than 60 honors students at North High.
And, now the questions. Is my son a super genius and school is too easy for him because his parents are so amazing that he knows everything? Uhhh, he’s playing Overwatch right now and writes summaries for stories at his school (summaries that look like a 7th-grader wrote them). He has always scored well in English on standardized tests, but not in the realm of amazing.
Or, did students just not read? I had a ton of them who claimed they did, but they couldn’t even break a 20 on the quiz.
Or, are kids just better test takers than others? Are they just smarter than others? I am starting to think that I could predict a student’s entire grade just by a single quiz, because the ones that got the 22s, 23s, and the 24 are the ones that ALWAYS do. There’s forever that hope that the fringe kid will rise to the occasion and take down these grade behemoths; sorry, they don’t.
Finally, has open access (any kid can take any class) just diluted the pool so much that we teach to the middle and we accept good for what used to be great? Because now that I’ve given this quiz, what would the point of a test be? I already know the results. And the ensuing essay on literature they didn’t read (or didn’t understand) would just be more of me beating that metaphorical dead horse. What do you do when your class averages are less than 70 percent? because pretending that students just had a bad day, or are bad quiz takers, doesn’t explain why my 12-yr-old got a 23 on the same quiz without having the actual quiz in front of him.
Maybe all of this might make people uncomfortable.
Teaching is humbling and frustrating. I learn things every day. But, again, I’m starting to see why other teachers aren’t testing. When you do, you generate results. These results–this data, if you will–doesn’t always add up.

Late starts are weird days. They never feel real, students don’t act like they usually do–it just doesn’t go the way other days do. It started with me walking in the library and being told to “pick a number,” from a person holding a bowl with papers in it.
“Eight,” I said, without taking a paper out of the bowl.
The person holding the bowl said, “Pick another number.”
“Six,” I said, still without paper.
The person holding the bowl of papers asked, “Can’t you do anything right?” or something along those lines.
I took a piece of paper that had the number 8 on it.
And so it started. It ended later with a higher-up calling me “Stover.” Not Tom. Not Mr. Stover. And not the first time this has happened.
Today, in our WASC meeting, we read a chapter about data, and how much we analyze it, and how there’s this data out there, and then the data that the data is covering is data in itself. There was much to be said and written about data.
We don’t look much at data. Perhaps that will be a WASC problem.
But one of the things that caught my eye in the chapter we read was talk of all the people that had left North High in the last two years, or around the time we had our last WASC visit. The chapter did not give definitive data on all the people we have lost at North High, so I decided to pull a list from the top of my head. I’m sure I’m missing some people here, and I apologize, but the list is fairly long for a school with fewer than a 100 staff members.
Grace Pak no longer teaches Korean.
We lost two wrestling coaches in the last year–one made the papers.
Each year we roll in another volleyball coach.
Victoria Perez did something with Tech.
Regina Wang was here for Spanish?
Pagan was here for a year. Adam Pike maybe two. Josh Lay a few. Amanda Dunn didn’t last a quarter. Kamura stayed a year. Deanne Garriott was there a year. Someone named Bui. There was a Woo.
Bob Brack taught Calculus for around 10 years. Seth Miller replaced him and lasted a year.
Heather Brooke taught many things, but kicked ass on the Psych AP. She was there 10 years.
Cheli Nye taught math and was an Assistant Principal. She worried about advancement, so she left. Within a year, she is principal at Malibu High.
Michelle England taught English and shared caramels with me.
Chris Johnson was our custodian and site supervisor.
Jeff Phillips was our site supervisor.
Kim Till was a secretary for Chris and Jeff.
Isabel Inn was the principal’s secretary.
Diane Fox made sure everything ran smoothly with scheduling and inputting students into the system.
Danielle Sibley was all over the place, last checking in as Counseling secretary.
Vivien Morita was a secretary in ASB. Around 20 years?
Kevin May taught psychology and history.
Jorj Benone taught reading, English, and Theater. 10 plus years.
Matt Hall was our College and Career person.
Christine MacInnis was head counselor. Around 10 years.
Jenna Murata was the ELD Coordinator and put tasty treats in our mailboxes. Many years.
Marc Pioch was the ASB director and taught in the social science department. Twenty years plus.
Lawrence Hom taught social studies and was an assistant principal. Twenty years plus.
Silvia Cuevas taught science. Close to ten years?
Kendra Parsons taught math. 10 years?
Rick Weber taught Spanish and might have been there 20 years. Maybe more.
Brian Ormsby was athletic director and taught English and special ed. He was there a long time.
Mitzi Stover, my wife, lasted 21 years. She taught almost every English class. I know why she left, as do other people.
I don’t know why some of the others are no longer at our school. Some of the one-and-done teachers never crossed paths with me. But I do know this is an incomplete list, that I have just forgotten people in my haste to make a fairly accurate piece of data. Because this is data. Is it data that is similar to many schools? I mean, do other schools have such turnover in the last few years, or is this a little excessive?
Once again, I don’t know, but data matters. Is it important to know why these teachers left? Is it important to know why they are no longer at North (for some didn’t just leave)? Are they still teaching? Are they in education? Did they retire?
Yes, there were newer teachers, and the national data on new teacher turnover was illustrated by some of the names I mentioned. But these are former employees that were there for many years and, in the last few years, are no longer at North High. 40ish people out of a staff of a 100ish.
Sorry if I left a name off the list. If your name does appear and I have offended you by putting it on a public post, please message me and I will remove it. I just wanted to give more support to a claim, and names make it a little more real.

I watched Spotlight this weekend. It’s the ensemble piece that won Best Picture at the last Academy Awards. It’s pretty good–kind of like a Law and Order: SVU that cusses a little and takes on Catholic priests molesting kids. The point of view is Boston Globe reporters following the case and trying to find the entire scope of crimes.
The part that resonated with me the most was something that ties in to education, and maybe any job. When the reporters are getting ready to blow the case wide open and shine a light on the Catholic church, which we are told over and over is HUGE in Boston, they remember an article they buried years ago about the same claims against priests. It is implied that the same reporters who about to print this new article were the ones that buried it years ago.
It’s the age-old argument that goes along the lines of “We knew it, and we let it happen.”
This blog is mostly cathartic for me, a chance to bring me back to the discipline that is writing, but to think about all the things that happen at a public school, and all the times, days, weeks, months, years where certain things just happen–it’s some staggering facts that no one wants to know. We all want to believe that our schools, much like the Catholic church in Spotlight, are places that provide that safe and supportive environment for students. After all, it’s the language of the schools themselves.
And most of the time, school provides everything you hope it will. But sometimes it does not. Do we get a free pass for the “most of the time” behavior? or, much like our social media world today, should we be judged for the other moments? I don’t know.
But many people know. And things happen every day.

Consider the whole student. Do schools?
Today was another reminder of the educational system at its finest. I have mentioned Poetry Out Loud more than once lately. Yesterday, students who were nominated by their teachers (I nominated three of my 160) got to perform poems to a panel/audience. Kind of daunting. About 35 nominated kids got to do this. A list of top students was picked at the end.
I do not personally know the winner, so I will be more vague than I want to be. It needs to be written that the winner has a GPA that is not attractive to most four-year universities. I do not know the winner’s plans after high school, but maybe this person should find something where “the whole person” is considered, something that doesn’t just focus on A through G requirements and test scores. Every now and again, a winner like this comes along, which SHOULD make us rethink our priorities–if this person is successful enough to beat out 30+ other students who were all nominated because they previously performed their poems well, then perhaps there should be some better options for this person to succeed. Since everyone at our school, technically, participated in Poetry Out Loud, this winner bested EVERY student at school.
Last year, both graduation speakers were not A through G eligible. That means they had received grades that were low enough to exclude them from attending four-year universities right out of high school. We had two graduation speakers–both had received a grade less than a C. I was the teacher who gave one of the students her only D. This student was always a great speaker, has a charisma and charm to her, and wants to be a chef in the future. North High offers Speech for her, which she took and received an A. I also had this girl again during her senior year, where she received an A in English APN, a class with media literacy and community service worked into the curriculum. She’s awesome, and got to show it in Speech and APN. North High offers no cooking classes.
This girl did not have grades attractive to four-year universities.
I had another girl with similar grades want to paint my room’s back wall. She worked diligently, even coming in on a weekend, and finished it. On paper, this girl looks average. My wall looks cool.
Lately, the non-amazing-GPA kids have been winning Mind Madness, a Jeopardy-meets-College-Bowl kind of tournament featuring teams of four in a March Madness bracket. A few years ago, an APN team of just regular kids won the tourney. Three of the kids had under a 3.0 GPA, while the other kid had around a 3.8 (and ended up at Long Beach State). They won all their matches, defeating a team in the finals that all started out at really good four-year universities (Cal, Irvine, Cal Poly SLO, UC Santa Barbara). The final wasn’t even close.
I have more examples, but the issue is simple to me–how are these kids succeeding against their peers who look WAY better on paper? What are we measuring grade-wise that lets students win competitions against other students with GPAs a full two points higher than theirs? And, are these students who are succeeding in competitions not succeeding in school (gradewise) because we don’t afford them the opportunity to do so?
Because, obviously, there’s more to them. Reading and writing are only a part of reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

There have been a few articles making the rounds lately about a teacher shortage in California. The articles list many reasons for the shortage–from pay, to millenials wanting more, to burnout–which end up being the usual suspects. Everyone knows why there’s a shortage of teachers. IT’S HARD.
My wife will tell you it’s not the pay, it’s the working conditions. She claims the educational system is not set up to help students be successful in their 21st-century worlds. And for that reason alone, teachers and students are set up for failure and frustration. I’m not going to argue with her–after all, she’s the one in the family with the Teacher of the Year credits. Plural.
A teacher might argue that teaching is not that tough. That’s the same teacher who will tell you that writing is easy. It means they’re not a very good teacher and probably don’t write very well. Here’s a riddle–in a town of two barbers, which one do you go to for a good haircut?
But I’m not even sure what a good teacher is anymore.
We spent a year on Common Core training–our whole district’s middle and high school teachers. All of us had to show up for half a day, once a month, to be reminded of many things we already did in the classroom, just under different guises and catch phrases. And, to be on the same page when it came to reading and writing. However, since there are still four English standards categories, I guess listening and speaking just had to wait their turn. And anything digital, too, for if you look online for resources, even in reading in writing, the pickings are slim.
I feel like Michael Moore, going through topic after topic of why there’s a teacher shortage. But maybe it’s just because that’s all you are–a teacher. A noble profession to some, a babysitter to others. Just a stepping stone that a student must step over to get to the promised land of college. I’m certainly not as interesting as Snapchat, or even a phone.
Today, a girl who eats lunch in my room, said that she skipped her English class because she would just rather sit in her car and eat breakfast and listen to her car stereo. She is in the class I wrote about yesterday–the one being led by a sub who no one knows, replacing that teacher who never existed–and claims that the class is just waiting around for a full-time substitute and doing nothing but talking. That’s what she claims.
Maybe teaching isn’t very attractive anymore. Was it ever? But, even our school and district make the job less than glamorous. We’ve known for months that this position would be open. We’ve known for months when this position would be open. Yet, here is a student eating in her car, missing a class she should be in, because she doesn’t feel she’s missing anything.
By the way, the answer to the riddle above is–you get the haircut from the barber with the worse haircut. It is assumed that each barber must cut the other barber’s hair.
The answer to the teacher shortage might be as simple–hire the better barber, no matter if they have the worse haircut. And, if they’re a good barber, do what you can to keep them. There’s a pamphlet when you leave that explains what I mean.

As Orwell wrote–“Syme had ceased to exist: he had never existed.”
Today was a great reminder of that quote. We had a teacher a North High, whose name escapes me now because this teacher no longer exists. I walked by this teacher’s room today, or what I remembered was the teacher’s room, and the students were being taught by someone I did not know. No one has informed me of the previous teacher’s whereabouts; no one has informed me of who this new person is. We do have administrators who are capable of emailing, and our English department (who this un-person could have been a part of up until recently) just met as a whole group yesterday, but nothing was said or written. We all have classes so we move along.
Later on in the day I had that nagging itch of memory, so I asked some colleagues, “Did you guys get any news about a teacher leaving our school? Wasn’t there that teacher who used to teach over there (I pointed)? Did anybody announce it? Was it in an email, or something?
I soon realized that I had asked a lot of questions in a quick span, as my colleagues were sporting some confused looks. “Remember?” I asked another question. “This teacher taught that class that someone else taught long ago. Many kids signed up for it and the class was around for at least 20 years. Remember? Wasn’t there that class that was on the books for about 20 years and then ceased to exist last year? And now the teacher that taught that class does not exist?”
Their mouths started to form sentences, but no words came out, as if those, too, ceased to exist. You would think that a teacher who had been at a school for a long time (or was it a long time?) would surely get some shout-out somewhere.
Instead, someone else is now in that teacher’s classroom. Perhaps next week there will be yet another new person in there. Perhaps all this will come back to my memory soon, or I will cross paths with this former teacher again.
Perhaps we shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.

I’m not even sure if what happened today was a good thing. It was the second day of Poetry Out Loud and the goal is for everyone to remember and recite a poem as well as they can. Spoken Word form would be great, a longer poem with some rigor is always appreciated–but sometimes you have to take what you get.
Two classes of seniors and everyone did it. Did they choose the hardest poems? No. But they all got up and spoke. Yes, they stumbled. Sure, I had to prompt them. My argument is that not everyone is an English major and just wants to jump through this hoop and move along. My opposite argument is, How hard is it?
Two classes of Sophomore Honors English and everybody but one did it. There was plenty of time left–the student chose not to go. Whatever. Over a hundred-and-twenty students and only one doesn’t go? That means I’m ahead of the game. Still, most of the poems they chose were fairly simple except for two students who chose LONG poems and read them well. I nominated them to read to an audience later this week and I hope they get some recognition for their efforts.
And then my regular sophomore class. Only seven of 32 went yesterday. It became painfully obvious early on that not all the students were going to get up and recite. But many did, and many did a pretty good job. I HATE that too many kids chose “Fire and Ice,” by Robert Frost because it’s really short. I’m BITTER that they found Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Ebb,” which is even shorter than the Frost poem. Most students who chose those poems couldn’t even read them correctly–they missed words, or laughed (because if you laugh and act like you’re not trying then it doesn’t really count as you doing something poorly).
With about the half the class done, and others looking to do nothing, I told the class that I would double the points if they all went. Just get up and read the poem, if they had to. They all went. They got up in front of the class and read a poem off their phones’ screens. But they all went. They bonded together, didn’t want to let each down, wanted the extra points, and got it done. Did they do a good job when reading off their phones? Nope.
Here’s the good. My seniors and Honors sophomores did fine. They want to graduate and get good grades, so they play along. But my regular students, many of whom are not doing well in class, all got up and got things done. It showed they can do something they didn’t want to do, which is a big part of life sometimes. I don’t want to take the trash cans to the curb tomorrow, but they’ll be there.
Here’s the bad. Really? I have to throw points out there for kids to care? And, 50-word (or fewer) poems? I could have remembered and recited that when I was in 2nd grade (as they probably could have, too). The “bad” is that I can’t offer points for breathing, and having a pulse, and doing what you’re supposed to do on every assignment–in some cases, students will just have to do things for pride, curiosity, their brand, or for whatever reason things get done.
Year 18 and I’m more confused than ever. Baby steps.